People cast their votes at a polling station in New York on April 19, 2016. New York began voting on April 19, in a high-stakes presidential primary tipped to hand Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump victories in the race to clinch the Democratic and Republican tickets to the White House. / AFP PHOTO / Jewel SAMADJEWEL SAMAD/AFP/Getty Images less

People cast their votes at a polling station in New York on April 19, 2016. New York began voting on April 19, in a high-stakes presidential primary tipped to hand Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump victories in ... more

L. Oliver Robinson, Shenedehowa Superintendent of Schools checks in as the polls open at the Gowana Middle School for the land deal vote Tuesday Dec 5, 2017 in Clifton Park, NY. (Skip Dickstein/ Times Union archive) less

L. Oliver Robinson, Shenedehowa Superintendent of Schools checks in as the polls open at the Gowana Middle School for the land deal vote Tuesday Dec 5, 2017 in Clifton Park, NY. (Skip Dickstein/ Times Union ... more

A man casts his vote at a polling station in New York on April 19, 2016. New York began voting on April 19, in a high-stakes presidential primary tipped to hand Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump victories in the race to clinch the Democratic and Republican tickets to the White House. / AFP PHOTO / Jewel SAMADJEWEL SAMAD/AFP/Getty Images less

A man casts his vote at a polling station in New York on April 19, 2016. New York began voting on April 19, in a high-stakes presidential primary tipped to hand Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump victories in the ... more

Photo: JEWEL SAMAD

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Local elections boards tighten steps to secure balloting

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The security efforts that go into Tuesday's special elections began years ago and will continue after the votes are initially counted.

The local boards of elections, which administer elections, are required by the state to have an independent review of their certification testing software. They are prohibited from establishing internet connections to voting machines and must comply with rigorous guidelines to ensure voting machines are correctly reading ballots, according to state Board of Elections spokesman John Conklin. Additionally, the computer that programs voting machine scanners can't be used for any other purpose in order to reduce exposure to malware.

After the votes are tallied, local boards of elections check the results with a required hand review of paper ballots from at least three percent of election precincts. If they detect a discrepancy with the initial results, Conklin said, they could review all the ballots.

There is also the potential that the results could be correct and the counties or state present bad information to the public because their websites were hacked. Hackers can try to overload an election website so it crashes or create a pop-up on the official website that sends visitors to a phony website.

Since the FBI alerted election officials of the attempt, New York installed an intrusion detection system and started using tools to shield the public portion of its website.

One target for hacking is the voter database in New York, which is maintained by local boards of elections and uploaded daily to a statewide registry, which is the official list of voters. In 2016, there were breaches into the databases maintained by Arizona and Illinois, but both states reported no changes to their information.

In New York, voters can check their registration status and data online to ensure their information is correct before they head to the polls. The system is protected against alteration by directing the queries to a static list instead of the live database.

In order to make additional security upgrades, the state Board of Elections requested $15 million in the state budget, but ended up with $5 million. It will overcome that gap in funding with $19 million recently appropriated by Congress, according to Conklin.

The federal funds will allow the state to do a comprehensive assessment of its vulnerabilities and establish a cyber-incident response team. The upgrades should be in place for the 2020 presidential election.